Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 12 (IANS) Team Anna Monday demanded that the government withdraw the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010, and claimed it was “misleading” and has no provisions to “investigate and prosecute” corrupt judges.

Terming it a “bill of deceit”, Team Anna stressed that the provisions of bill should be brought under the ambit of the Jan Lokpal Bill it has drafted.

“The present format of the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill does not deal with investigation of judges for corruption or their prosecution. It only deals with the complaints against judges for misconduct; the bill is just to mislead the common man,” Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan said.

Voicing his disagreement with the bill and the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s recommendations on the legislation, another Team Anna member, Arvind Kejriwal, said they will write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “clarify the government’s stand on the issue”.

Team Anna is against the government’s stand that “the bill would make the judiciary more accountable” and “there was no need to put judges under the Lokpal”.

The social activists said both the bill and the standing committee report violate and seriously undermine the basic constitutional principle of judicial independence from the executive and legislature by suggesting inclusion of two members of parliament and the attorney general of India in the National Judicial Oversight Committee to look into complaints of misconduct against a judge.

“This amounts to conflict of interest as sitting judges would be asked to look into a complaint against a brother judge,” said Bhushan.

Pointing out another provision in the bill to make the proceedings confidential, by prohibiting media scrutiny, he said it is a retrograde step, which is against transparency.

Suggesting a five-member judicial conduct commission, independent of judiciary as well as the executive, Team Anna said it should be “fulltime and not ex-officio, as the bill proposes”.

“The day two judges go to jail, 90 percent corruption in judiciary would stop. There is no political will in the current bill to check corruption in judiciary,” said former law minister Shanti Bhushan, Prashant’s father.

He said putting in place a Judicial Oversight Committee to start process of removal of a judge, instead of the present system of 100 members of the Lok Sabha or 50 of the Rajya Sabha doing it, still entails the onerous impeachment process which is amenable to politicisation.

“People want a check on corruption,” said another Team Anna member and former police officer Kiran Bedi.